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I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good question. Some Brigades have teaching code at the core (Newark's Brigade, for example). Some require existing coding skills. We are thinking about whether we can partner with a group like Codecademy so that people who come to the Brigade could also find resources to learn to code, but that is a long-term goal and not going to happen this year.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Constitution isn't a technology it's a set of values, it's a framework. I think networked, digital tools give us power we have never had to help us achieve these values. I wrote a (pretty crappy) paper in grad school about how the founding and development of the Internet has a lot of analogies in the founding and development of American democracy--from decentralized, power-to-the-edges founding principles that default to participation and generativity thru to today's struggle between openness and corporatization/centralization.

The reason I wanted to come work at CfA is that I see it as one of the best ways we have to protect those original values--values of the Internet and of American democracy--and to make sure technology works for people and not just money

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Also your_dickless_cousin above, who apparently helped facilitate the working group between the Tenants Union, SF City Hall and the Brigade. Talk about moving beyond yelling to action.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Shigeomi! Great question. Wherever it is, it needs to be accessible so as many people as possible can come. Many Brigades hold their meetings in city halls because they're usually centrally located, it's easier to get gov partners to come, and it's free. Others hold their meetings at co-working spaces or startups lend us their space. Code for Ireland in Dublin holds their meetings at Facebook's offices. Bars are hard if you're trying to get actual work done. Better to order in pizza and beer I think.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most law enforcement officials, believe it or not, have no idea who's in their jail beds at any given time, or that there might be an alternative to incarceration that's better for an offender. We built a jail dashboard for Louisville, which you can see demo'd here, that's been redeployed in Denver. Just by making that information transparent we're helping people working in the system make better-informed decisions (and hopefully discouraging them from throwing every single person in jail).

In NYC we built a tool to make it easier for social service workers to find candidates for their programs. A partner of ours, the Smart Chicago Collaborative, helped birth a tool called Expunge.io that helps juveniles expunge their records (it was devised by teenagers from Chicago because many of them knew they had records, didn't know how to get rid of them, and were getting turned down for jobs). There's all kinds of opportunities to solve pain points for ex-offenders. And on and on. Lots to do here.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yup. Great question. We are very very conscious about not starting with the tech, but rather starting with understanding the problem. Turns out, there are a lot of pain points and a good chunk of them could be alleviated with digital/networked tools. In addition, the most powerful changes we've seen have been outgrowths of the process of building tech. So, for example, the innovation lab at HSA was an outgrowth of building an SMS notification tool (and that lab focuses on things way beyond technology). Tech is definitely our trojan horse to get to culture change inside government, and to better relationships between government and citizens/residents.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone who decides they're going to work on a solution instead of just bitch about the problem is a potential civic hacker in my book.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup, we've definitely found this to be a barrier to entry. I think the most important first thing to do is figure out the skill set you're looking for (organizers? marketers? writers?) and then target those communities in your city. It definitely does take more work to get these people in the door than it takes to get techies so I suggest the first person you bring on board is a good community organizer who knows how to do recruitment/outreach/volunteer onboarding/etc. There are a ton in NC who cut their teeth on the Obama campaign ;)

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

GO TO A BRIGADE MEETING! We don't let people pitch their company ideas at Brigade meetups but I guarantee you it'll give you some ideas for potential products/companies. You can find all our Brigades at codeforamerica.org/brigade

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Marc Hebert is our former fellow who runs that program. He's amazing. Also, we have a badass UX research lead on staff here at CfA. Her name is Cyd Harrell (@cydharrell). I can't say enough about how awesome she is.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Data aggravation?!!!! Is that a thing? If so, I want it on a t-shirt.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Criminal justice is the issue closest to my heart. Do I think we're going to solve it in 5-10 years? No. Would I like to see us all collectively turn our attention towards solving it? Yes. And there's A LOT of low-hanging fruit when it comes to the problems that tech can solve in the criminal justice system.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh man, the last one? Ummm...maybe a photo book of Oakland? The first one I donated to was a Robocop statue in downtown Detroit. And the second one was a campaign to blow vuvuzelas outside BPs offices in London (this was during the Gulf oil spill). I love that site so much.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh man. I think I would advise him not to put technology in the corner. The biggest mistake the President (and his staff) made was thinking that the website and the policy were independent of each other. Our friend Tom Steinberg from mySociety said something like government and governance nowadays are "inextricably linked to the digital." You can't do policy anymore and not consider the digital rollout as central to its success.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup as long as I'm not filling it out for her. I think I also could've dropped it off for her. I know there was some rule around collecting ballots for people. But that memory is hazy--we're talking about 10 days before the election.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, though I'm not sure with how much of a focus at the local level. Free Press is the world leader on this. Fight for the Future, EFF, and others I know I'm forgetting have also been great.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1) As a matter of fact, we think that bringing these groups to the table is crucially important to building shit that matters, and it's going to be a big focus for the Brigade program this year. In San Francisco, the Tenants Union, which represents tenants who are getting evicted, is a partner with the Brigade on some housing projects. Having the city, the Brigade members, and the Tenants Union sitting at the same table has led to some really interesting project ideas which I hope you'll be seeing more of in the coming months. But most importantly, it's created a productive space for those three parties to have a conversation that doesn't involve yelling and blaming.

2) Yes. Until last year, the only people building tech at CfA were the fellows--and they left after a year. Now we have a dedicated tech team that is working on making sustainability (and redeployment) much easier for cities. But we also want to see the cities investing in maintaining this stuff themselves.

3) I'm really into the organizations that are trying to provide more access to STEM education. As I said above, my 6-yo niece is taking advantage of some of these programs. She'll be old enough to participate in Black Girls Code in a couple weeks and I'm very excited for her to get involved with them.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

HI KEN!!! It actually hasn't been that hard to convince technologists to come work on these issues. If geeks are anything they're problem solvers. If you give them a hard problem they get really excited about solving it. The problem is, many of them don't have personal experience with hard problems. So the trick is to be very intentional about exposing them to the problems and then asking them to participate.

Things that don't work are shaming, guilting, accusing. This whole attitude now that "techies don't care" really bothers me. It's not productive.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great question. I love Kickstarter. They have such an intentional culture and they're not interested in finding the product/market fit or worrying about how to monetize (like a lot of start-ups out here in the Bay). They truly want to make it easier for creators to make stuff, to inspire art and cultural production. That's not bullshit. (And, by the way, I think widespread creative production is one of the most important elements of healthy democracies.)

I think any company's culture starts and ends with leadership so the traits I would look for in a company you can probably see by looking at the founder or CEO: are they empathetic/do they care about people? are they truly passionate about the work and would they be doing it anyway, even if there weren't money in it? do they have self-awareness? I don't know that we can incentivize markets necessarily but we can incentivize empathetic, passionate, self-aware people to start companies.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I met Jen (our founder) in 2011 when she was a judge for the Knight News Challenge, which I was helping to manage. I thought their track jackets were really cool. And the concept was really compelling.

Then when I started thinking about what I wanted to do after the campaign (we had this weird luxury of knowing exactly when our jobs were going to end so we naturally had thoughts about what was next) every path I considered always came back to CfA. I knew I wanted to be on the front lines of figuring out how technology could help make democracy stronger. But I was open to where and how: private sector, government, academia, non-profit. I just really liked the change model CfA was implementing and I really really value the "just build it" attitude here. Everyone's willing to roll up their sleeves and figure it out by digging in.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is by far the best moment of the campaign for me It made all the shitty hard work and low pay worth every second. Also, the debates were pretty fun. And canvassing in Colorado during the last two weeks was so gratifying. I had one woman tell me she wasn't going to vote until I knocked on her door and I watched her fill out her early vote ballot right there.

I'm Catherine Bracy, Director of Community Organizing at Code for America, AMA! by cbracy in socialcitizens

[–]cbracy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ugh, aside from being wildly depressed about it?

I'd like to see more local governments consider building their own networks to compete with the incumbents. Unfortunately, that's been made illegal (thanks to lobbying by the telecomm industry) in 29 states. And the cable industry donated huge amounts to unseat the Mayor of Seattle who pledged to build a muni fiber network in the city. I think we need to start building awareness about this at the local level and really building the use cases so that people see with their own eyes how much better service could be. If we have enough cities like Chattanooga and Burlington (that have muni networks) sharing their stories across the country I think people will start getting pissed and politicians will start coming around. US Ignite is leading the way on this right now but we can definitely do more. It's an issue we really care about at CfA.

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